Wolf, Tripping is huge for a "tank". The tanks job is to stop bad guys from attacking weaker targets. Tripping them prevents them from ever reaching the opponent.
If you are playing human, Huntmaster: Human is a good feat (take small cat, they get trip just like wolf, plus claw attacks).
As your second feat at 1st, take Spirit's Gift, choose Life-BAM! Fastheal 1 on a level 2 equivalent animal companion. You're welcome.
For the pet, Toughness, Dodge?
If you are playing human, Huntmaster: Human is a good feat (take small cat, they get trip just like wolf, plus claw attacks).
As your second feat at 1st, take Spirit's Gift, choose Life-BAM! Fastheal 1 on a level 2 equivalent animal companion. You're welcome.
For the pet, Toughness, Dodge?
Spirits Gift is almost too good. It's so good PFS banned it.
Your feats or your animal companion?
First feat I would take on an animal companion would likely be combat reflexes. That is if I take a wolf (which is almost always) since they have 1 natural attack (one hard hit > multiple soft hits). Combat reflexes gives them more attacks per round and their attacks trip up your adversaries. I wouldn't do toughness as they start out with more health then the players do. Later levels you may want it, but not at 1.
On the druid, it totally depends on what you are building towards. My last druid was a pack leader and took boon companion a few times, the other feats were for the druid himself.
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I am running curse of the crimson throne campaign. My druid is in need of an animal companion that can tank in the urban setting. Any suggestions?
For urban settings only common use animals are a good idea. Normally in urban settings you will be hunted at some point. By the law if the bad guys know what their doing. So any animal companion that is not common in the city make it easy to find you. It comes down to yes I have seen the guy with the wolf. He is the one we are looking for. The more exotic the pet the simpler it is to find you because of it. In a urban setting large animal companions will cause another set of problems on housing it. As no smart stables will let you put your meat eating dino in with the horses. Just saying these are some of the things every one forgets about when they take animal companions in to the urban settings.
Animal companion choices for urban settings I would recommend.
Dog, Horse, Pony. None are great choices for combat. However if your needing something to blend in. Where no one will look twice at them.
This is great information. I am looking an various animal companions and did a search on the forums. THis is helpful.
Looks like Spirit's Gift got nerfed somewhere along the way, though it's still a solid choice.
Trip is nice, and it's fine to spend a few resources making it solid, but make sure your pal can still do its thing against creatures that are impossible or improbable to trip.
I find that ACs tend to be a little light on HP, so I typically get Toughness as their first feat. Next, if I wanted the Wolf to be good at Tripping, I'd take Weapon Focus: Bite. One thing I like to remind people is that right out of the gate, ACs can wear Leather Barding with no penalty, that's +2 to AC for relatively cheap. Then get Masterwork Studded Leather when they get their size increase. When animals only have one attack, I'm pretty tempted to get Improved Natural Attack when they qualify. Power Attack can be ok for ACs because they tend to have pretty nice STR scores, and it opens up things like Bull Rush and Drag. Finally, when ACs are large, I'll often invest in Narrow Frame, especially if there is an abundance of 5ft hallways.
Naw, mithril chain shirt is perfect, there's no ACP and it's 4 points of AC that you don't need to buy armor prof light for your animal feats
Wolf is good
A more exotic choice would be the Ancylosaurus, which learns a Stunning Attack after lvl 7 or the Stegosaurus, which learns Trip as well.
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Here's one highly-optimized Animal Companion approach. Only do this if the other PCs are also optimized, otherwise you'll overshadow your warriors and make them feel useless.
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@Cavall: You are half right. In the example I linked Enlarge Person is a cleric Domain Spell with the Plant(Growth) domain, thus it is on the spell list for the cleric in the linked example. In that example the Animal Companion comes from the cleric Animal (Feather) domain. Both come from the same class. Share spells applies. However, Cavall, you are correct that the Enlarge Person trick would not work for a druid.
The druid may cast a spell with a target of “You” on her animal companion (as a touch range spell) instead of on herself. A druid may cast spells on her animal companion even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the companion’s type (animal). Spells cast in this way must come from a class that grants an animal companion. This ability does not allow the animal to share abilities that are not spells, even if they function like spells.
The trick of casting Enlarge Person on your Animal Companion only works for a cleric with both the Plant(Growth) subdomain and the Animal domain. It also works for a Sylvan Sorcerer. Most classes with an animal companion (including Druids!) can't combine Enlarge Person with Share Spells.
You could go for an exotic animal that has better stats/abilities. If you're concerned about the creature's size then just give it the fey touched archetype. Then, when you're outside of a combat situation and just want to walk around town you can hit your animal companion with either Carry Companion or Harmless Form. Both spells are low level and can easily last all day with 1-2 castings. You could always keep a scroll of either one in cases when you need to "hide" your companion in a hurry and are out of spells for the day.
for a tank type, I would recommend the Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus or Mokele-Mbembe. The Ankylosaurus gets a 2d6 stunning attack, the Stegosaurus gets a 2d8 tripping attack and the Mokele-Mbembe gets a 2d6 attack with 15 foot reach. All three get some of the highest natural armor bonuses in the game.
edit: I just realized fey touched wouldn't be applicable to what I suggested since you can only put it on animals that start out at size small max.
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Goliath Druid archetype lets you enlarge your companion too.